The hospital room smelled like antiseptic and rain.
It was past midnight, but Kyoto never truly slept—not when cursed energy was disturbed this deeply. Outside the window, the city lights blurred into long streaks as rain slid down the glass. Machines hummed softly around Maru's bed, their steady beeping the only thing anchoring the room to normalcy.
Maru lay motionless.
Bandages wrapped his torso and head, though none of them addressed the real wound.
The third eye beneath his skin twitched.
Yutsumi sat in the chair closest to the bed, elbows resting on his knees, fingers laced tightly together. His cursed energy was suppressed as much as he could manage, folded inward like a coiled wire. Even so, it reacted every time the air around Maru shifted.
Yuka stood behind him.
She hadn't sat down once.
Every time Yutsumi shifted, her gaze snapped to him first—then to Maru, then back again. Like she was tracking two unstable explosives and deciding which one she could throw herself on first.
Tsurugi leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, eyes closed. But he wasn't resting. His cursed energy remained razor-sharp, tuned outward.
"This feels wrong," he muttered.
Yutsumi nodded. "He's not unconscious."
Yuka stiffened. "What?"
"He's… somewhere else," Yutsumi said slowly. "Like his body is asleep, but his technique isn't."
The machines spiked.
Maru's heart rate surged violently.
Then—
The lights went out.
Not flickered.
Out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Yuka's cursed energy flared instantly. "Barrier!"
Too late.
The air folded inward.
Gravity tilted.
The hospital ceiling twisted sideways as if the concept of up had been rewritten. Equipment lifted off the floor, floating unnaturally, frozen mid-motion like insects caught in amber.
And Maru's third eye opened.
Fully.
The pressure was immediate and absolute.
Yutsumi couldn't breathe.
Not because the air was gone—but because inertia itself had been bent sideways. His body wanted to move in four directions at once.
Yuka cried out, dropping to one knee as the floor slid away beneath her.
Tsurugi drew his sword and slammed it into the ground, cursed energy anchoring him in place through sheer force of will.
"What the hell is this?!" he shouted.
Maru rose from the bed.
He did not stand.
He lifted—as if the concept of standing no longer applied.
His third eye burned with blinding intensity, lines of alien geometry radiating outward, warping space around him. Every object in the room obeyed him now—or rather, obeyed nothing at all.
A chair slammed sideways into the wall.
Glass shattered—then reassembled itself midair.
Yutsumi's vision doubled.
His cursed technique screamed.
Not to copy.
Not to adapt.
To intervene.
But his body refused to move.
Maru's mouth opened.
A voice came out that wasn't his.
"The threshold has been crossed."
Yuka screamed his name. "Maru! Wake up!"
The voice ignored her.
"Observation complete. Containment unnecessary."
The hospital wall peeled away like wet paper, revealing the city beyond—except it wasn't Kyoto anymore.
It was a fractured overlap.
Buildings stretched unnaturally long. Streets curved upward into the sky. Rain fell sideways, then upward, then froze.
The world itself was being treated like a movable object.
Tsurugi's eyes widened. "This isn't cursed energy."
Yutsumi forced air into his lungs. "It's translation," he gasped. "He's converting reality into a readable format."
Yuka looked at him sharply. "How do you know that?"
"I just do," he said—and that terrified him.
Maru's body jerked violently.
For a moment, his original eyes flickered back.
"Run," he croaked. "Please."
Then the third eye pulsed again.
Across the city, alarms screamed.
Far above Earth, hidden beyond perception, Cross stood within the mothership's observation chamber.
He watched everything.
The city folding.
The sorcerers struggling.
The boy adapting even now.
Cross's expression was conflicted.
"So this is what happens," he murmured, "when restraint fails."
Behind him, Simurian elders whispered anxiously.
"This power will be interpreted as an attack."
Cross didn't deny it.
Back in the fractured city, Yutsumi finally moved.
Not by force.
By surrender.
He stopped fighting the distortion.
Instead, he let his cursed energy align.
The pressure vanished instantly.
Yutsumi staggered forward, walking through twisted gravity as if it no longer applied to him.
Yuka screamed. "YUTSUMI, DON'T!"
He didn't look back.
Every step rewrote his understanding of motion. He wasn't immune—he was compatible.
Maru's third eye locked onto him.
The voice hesitated.
"Anomaly detected."
Yutsumi reached Maru.
Placed a trembling hand against his chest.
"I know you're holding it back," Yutsumi said softly. "I know why."
The third eye flared.
Yutsumi's cursed energy responded—not copying the power, but copying the limit Maru had been using his entire life.
Adaptive Perfect Copy completed another evolution.
Limiter Synchronization.
Yutsumi imposed Maru's own restraints—back onto him.
The city screamed.
Then—
Collapsed.
Gravity snapped back into place.
Rain fell normally.
The hospital corridor reassembled itself in a violent rush of reality.
Maru collapsed into Yutsumi's arms.
Yutsumi fell with him.
Yuka reached them first, pulling Yutsumi back with desperate strength, clutching him so tightly it hurt.
"You idiot," she sobbed. "You absolute idiot."
"I stopped him," Yutsumi whispered, dizzy. "I didn't hurt him."
She pressed her forehead against his. "That's not the point."
Tsurugi stood silently nearby, sword lowered.
For once, he had nothing to say.
Sirens echoed throughout Kyoto.
High above, Cross turned away from the observation feed.
"Humanity will not forgive this," he said quietly. "Even though it was not intentional."
One of the elders asked, "And the boy?"
Cross closed his eyes.
"He is more dangerous than any weapon," he said. "Because he doesn't want to be one."
In the hospital room, as Maru was rushed into deeper containment, Yutsumi felt something shift inside him.
Not power.
Responsibility.
And somewhere deep within the curse-saturated air of Tokyo—
Something ancient smiled.